


Mots Cassés

by amalnahurriyeh



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canadian Accents, Français | French, M/M, Professors Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 15:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19009078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amalnahurriyeh/pseuds/amalnahurriyeh
Summary: Nadège doesn’t mind teaching first year French.  But she has absolutely no idea where this kid’s Canadian accent is coming from.





	1. Semestre d’automne

**Author's Note:**

> So, the genesis of this story is this: I learned French French, and a number of years ago I moved to Canada to work in a Francophone environment. And I’ve been here for a good long while and I’m still...super mystified at the accent? I can’t reproduce it unless I’m actually trying to reproduce it, while my pronunciation of _sorry_ and _process_ and _Toronto_ are all coming along quite nicely—by the way, the about thing isn’t really true, at least not where I live. My kids have it naturally from their French classes in school, and it’s what I hear from my students and colleagues most of the time, but it still just sounds weird to me, and occasionally very, very silly. 
> 
> Now, in Real Life, I very much believe that all accents are equally valid and that people shouldn’t be stigmatized for their particular dialect of their language. So, this is a story that is not actually about making fun of Jack’s accent, but about imagining the fact that Bitty will, inevitably, develop a Canadian accent in French, and his teachers will be _confused as shit._
> 
> I know, canonically, that Bitty drops French spring semester. However, I needed more time for jokes. Also, it seems that canonically Bitty is not a terribly good student of languages, but I just...fixed that. Again, for jokes.
> 
> French words are in italics where used. I’m not going to translate everything in the notes at the end, but I will put elaborations as well as translations for the two significant chunks of French there. 
> 
> Title from Somnambule by Cœur de Pirate. I’m not certain the song is perfect, but I like the phrase (it literally means “broken words”). 
> 
> I’ve had to break it into two chunks...because my endnotes were too long. I’m so embarrassed.

Nadège was enjoying the quiet of the first office hours of the year to try to finish an overdue peer review report (was she Reviewer 2, or did she just have standards? The world may never know) when someone knocked on her door. Oh, there was always a _mordu_ , she supposed. “Come in,” she called, and turned to face the door. 

A blond boy pushed the door open. “Professor O’Connor? Is now a good time?”

“Certainly,” she said, and gestured to the chair. 

He sat down and smiled broadly. “Well, my name is Eric Bittle, and I’m in your 10:00 section of French 100? I just wanted to stop by to give you my athletic participation letter. I’m sure you just get dozens of these per term, but the coaches do really prefer we check in personally about them.”

She took the proffered paper and glanced at it. Ice hockey; she wouldn’t have guessed. “We do appreciate the chance to speak about it. Are you likely to miss many classes?”

“I’ve gone through the syllabus and highlighted which of our away games conflict with assignments. I can forward you that list a bit later. We don’t yet have our entire travel schedule, so I can’t guarantee which days I’ll miss class.” He laughed brightly. “It’s a bit different, having class every day! Haven’t done that since high school.”

She put the paper down. “It does seem like quite a burden, certainly. However, based on what we know about language learning, constant repetition is the greatest predictor of success. Short of picking you up and putting you in a French-speaking environment all the time, daily class is the best route to that.” He nodded. “So, Eric, tell me a little about yourself. What made you decide to take French for your language requirement?”

He blushed a little at that, and looked away. “Oh, no, ma’am, it’s not for the requirement. I passed the placement exam in Russian my frog year—“ Her eyebrows went up at that. Nobody took the Russian placement exam. It pretty much existed to placate Fyodor. “But anyway, I’ve got some spare credits to use up this year, and it seems really interesting! And, um. Well, I’m on the hockey team, and I’ve got some friends who are French-Canadian. So I thought it might be useful, or at least I’d have some tutors on call, right?” His laugh sounded a little forced, but then he looked down at his bag. “Oh! I almost forgot.” He unzipped it and pulled out a plastic container, which he opened and held out to her. “Now, I know croissants—“he said cruh-sahntz, not croissants— “would be more traditional, but with this weather I don’t mind telling you I have had a _heck_ of a time getting the dough to laminate, so I hope a clafoutis—“ he said the s— “would be good enough?” 

She looked down in puzzlement. The container held a large, perfectly browned clafoutis, full of dark cherries. “You bake?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, putting the container down. “You know, the recipes told me to leave the pits in? I did it, because they all insisted it was classic, but it seems mighty strange to me. In any case, I do hope you enjoy!” He held out a plastic fork.

She supposed she should be more restrained, but it looked amazing. She grabbed the fork and took a bite. The soft crush of the cherries, the rich eggs-and-cream of the batter; she had to close her eyes. She took the pit of the cherry out of her mouth and dropped it in her mostly-empty coffee mug. “It’s wonderful. Tastes like home.” 

He positively glowed at that. “Well, that just makes my day! Where’s home for you?”

“I grew up in the south of France, but I moved to Paris for university,” she explained, taking another bite. “I earned my PhD in England, and then came here to work.”

“Well,” Eric, said, leaning forward. “I have to say, I am not at all surprised to hear you lived in Paris! When I saw I had a Professor O’Connor, I assumed you’d be an American. But then, well!” She’s half prepared for some kind of trying-to-be-sensitive comment about not expecting a black woman to be francophone, but he continued, “I mean, you are honestly about the most French looking person I have ever seen! Your shoes yesterday were just _amazing_. And I love the scarf you’ve got on today. And your accent! I guess I really haven’t heard many French people talk not on the TV before.”

She laughed. “Well, my accent in English is very influenced by my husband’s—he’s Irish—and by the time I lived in Britain. But in French, I have a fairly standard accent.”

“Lucky you,” he said, gesturing to himself. Oh, that’s true, she supposed his accent was particularly strong—she had really only noticed it was different, not thought about how it must appear to native speakers. “Every time I get back up here it takes me three weeks to stop sounding like I just stepped off the set of _Yee-Haw_. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got more work to do. I’ll see you in class tomorrow!” He zipped up his bag and stood. 

“Thank you for the clafoutis,” she said, taking another bite.

He narrowed his eyes. “Say that again?”

“Clah-fou-TEE,” she said, slowly. “Emphasis on the final syllable, and we don’t say final s in French.”

“Clah-fou-TEE,” he repeated, trying it out. “Well, I’m can tell I’m going to have a lot of studying to do. Um, merci!”

“De rien. À demain, Éric,” she said.

“I’m gonna look that up,” he said jauntily, and waved as he headed out. 

***

“It can be a bit difficult for English speakers,” Nadège said to her assembled class, “so don’t worry if you can’t quite get the nasal sounds yet. What’s important is to be able to distinguish words that are very similar, like _un_ and _une_ , or _deux_ and _de_. So, let’s practice again. _Megan, commence_.” 

Megan put down her latte and regarded the text on the board with disdain. “Je habit a Samwell.” 

Nadège did not throw her coffee at her, because that was not a valid instructional technique. “Now, remember, we don’t say h in French, so instead of _je habite_ , we say _j’habite_.”

They went around the room, reading sentences so she could correct pronunciation. When it was Eric’s turn, he looked up guiltily from whatever he’d be writing in his notebook (at least he was off his phone) and focused on his sentence. “ _Je mange deur pommes._ ”

There was a light titter from the other students. “ _Pardon, Éric, répéte_?” Nadège said, not quite sure what she’d heard. 

“ _Je mange deur pommes_.” 

She blinked. That was...not an error she expected. “Ah, I think the, uh, vowel sound is confusing for you. You’re right that it’s not the same as _de_. But it’s more eu than er. _Deux pommes_.”

He crumpled his forehead. “ _Deuh_?”

“Better,” she said. “ _Marc, c’est à toi._ ”

***

Except it kept happening. _“J’ai ern chat noir.” “Deur plus trois fait sank.” “Il y a un lapain dans le jardain.”_ He wasn’t bad at phonology—he had a decent ear, could make most of the sounds of French, repeated things back to her correctly when she said them—but then, as soon as it was over, he was back to these incredibly weird pronunciations that she just couldn’t place. 

He swung by her office hours after class one day, to bring her a list of classes he was going to miss now that their schedule was set, and also to bring her a container of sablés. She accepted them both, but had to bring it up. “Eric, I hope you won’t mind me asking. But I’ve been noticing that you seem to be having some pronunciation trouble in particular.”

“Oh,” he said, and blushed. “Um. It sounds silly to say it, but—I’ve been practicing French with a friend, from _Montréal_?” He said it correctly, which surprised her. “And I don’t know, they must say things differently up there? Because I’m listening to him and what he’s saying and I think I’ve got it, but then I get to class and it’s so different from what you’re doing.”

“Ah, that makes good sense,” she said. “Yes, they do have a very different accent in Canada. I don’t know it well. Do you prefer to develop a more Canadian accent?”

“Well,” he said, still pink about the cheeks. “I don’t know if I have a preference? If I ever go to France, will people understand me with a Canadian accent?”

Nadège bit her tongue about how her countrymen feel about people who speak any variety of French other than the Parisian one—she’d heard what the neighbors called her mother growing up often enough. “Generally, yes, though it will be fairly obvious. It’s simply unusual, for a student at your stage not to be focused on a French accent.”

“I don’t think I have much of a choice,” he said, with a little laugh. “I mean, I learned Russian basically by listening, and I think that’s just...how I pick up languages? I’m not great at grammar or anything, but I’m pretty good at hearing how it sounds. So if I mostly hear my friends speak with a Canadian accent, that’s pretty much what I’m going to get.”

She nodded and took another cookie. “I certainly don’t mind. I’ll try to figure out what a standard Canadian accent is, so that I can help you focus on it.”

“Oh, ma’am, you don’t need to do that,” he said, picking up his bag.

“No, it’ll be fun,” she said. “Actually, my research is in sociolinguistics, and I remember very much enjoying some work I did on accent signification during my masters. So this would be a good side project.” Not that she really had time to do research anymore—they kept the language teachers on a 3/3 load here, and she rarely even got to teach anything but grammar these days. Well, that’s what you get when you’ve got to solve the two-body problem. 

“Well, I appreciate it,” he said, standing to leave. “ _Merci bien, madame! Bonne journée!_ ”

She blinked. Yes, she did have more to look up about Canadian French than she thought. 

***

Nadège did not expect to—what’s the English expression?—fall into a rabbit hole quite this hard, but well, that’s what happened when you think about things for a living. Sometimes, you just get entranced. In any case, it was good for her teaching; she was finding new texts to use with her students for reading comprehension, and lots of new ways to explore vocabulary. Really, nobody in the department was doing enough to integrate the rest of the Francophonie into the curriculum. French had just as many dialects as English (though fewer speakers) and so much interesting material produced in all of them. 

Some of the Belgian stuff is good, she’s totally entranced by Algerian pop music but can’t assign any of it because there’s just too much Arabic mixed in (though it all ended up on her phone for later listening—she should really learn Arabic some day—just a little, you know?), there’s more being published in Haiti than she really expected. She even called her mother to get ideas for what she could assign out of central Africa; it was not the most helpful call, because her mother had gone to convent school with Belgian nuns and then moved to France for university, but that’s the _mission civilisatrice_ for you). But Canada had the most interesting television, she found. It’s nothing like French television. Nadège had been in America for nearly ten years now, but she’d never been to Québec; in her head, it was basically France, but over here. Listening to people talk, watching their stupid cop procedurals and soap operas and travel shows, she realized she was entirely wrong: they’re North Americans who just happen to speak French. 

Peter found her three hours into a marathon of Taxi Payant, eating her way through a giant bowl of popcorn. “What on earth are you doing, love?” he said.

“Dialectology,” she said without looking away from the screen. “Did you know they use the word fuck as an intensifier in Canadian French? They don’t beep it out on television, either. There was even an obscenity case about it at the federal level which determined that it’s not sufficiently obscene in French, but it is in English.”

Peter must have realized he wasn’t getting anything sensible out of her at that point, so backed out of the room. This was what she got for marrying a physicist.

***

Finals came. The students were walking balls of stress; Nadège patiently advised them not to sleep in Founders more than one night in a row, and that it was a good idea to shower every once in a while. Eric brought her chocolate chip cookies and interrogated her about the verb être for twenty minutes. And then it was done, and the blissful lull of break was upon her.

Which was good, because Nadège had just inhaled all of 30 vies, and now she had to watch everything Karine Vanasse had ever been in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Food: You probably know what croissants are. A clafoutis is a dessert where a thick batter (halfway between American pancake batter and a custard) is poured over fruit, usually cherries, and baked until solid. Sablés (literally ‘sandy’) are a type of shortbread. 
> 
> French words with explanations where needed:
> 
> The words Bitty says weird, all drawn from my shock and horror at my kid’s accent:
> 
> Un: one. Pronounced ern in Québécois.  
> Deux: two. Pronounced deur in Québécois.  
> Jardin: garden. Pronounced jar-dayn in Québecois.  
> Lapin: rabbit. Pronounced lap-ayn in Québécois. INCIDENTALLY: it’s super sweet and I love it conceptually when Jack calls Bitty lapin BUT I CAN’T NOT HEAR HOW WEIRD IT SOUNDS TO ME, SO WEIRD, JACK’S ACTUAL ACCENT WOULD BE SO WEIRD. 
> 
>  
> 
> Elaborations/References:
> 
> Mordu: literally means “bitten.” It basically means someone who is very eager about getting work done; I don’t know if this is only Canadian, but I love it. The person on my campus who runs writing days “pour les mordus” translates it into English as “for keeners,” which is British English, not Canadian (I think) but I also love it.
> 
> Montréal: In French, the city name is said mon-ray-al. In Canadian English, it is said closer to munch-ray-awl. Mon-tree-all is nobody’s pronunciation except mine, apparently.
> 
> Merci bien, madame! Bonne journée!: Both the formulations “merci bien” rather than “merci beaucoup,” and “bonne journée” for ending an interaction are particularly Canadian in my experience—though it might just be that I’m hearing them more here, and they signify identically in France, in which case I’m an idiot. 
> 
> Francophonie: the worldwide community of French speakers, and also a political organization like the Commonwealth of former French colonies. Approximately 55% of the world’s speakers of French live in Africa, compared to 36% in Europe. 
> 
> Mission civilisatrice: the French version of the White Man’s Burden; the ideological justification for colonialism, framed as bringing French cultural salvation to savages with no culture. Whereas British colonialism reified forms of ‘native’ knowledge in an attempt to control, French colonialism just straight-up annihilated local culture and told everybody they were French now. (Spoilers: when they went to France nobody thought they were French. Funny, that!) Despite the fact that this is objectively bullshit, plenty of people still believe in it in various forms. 
> 
> Taxi Payant is the title of Cash Cab in Quebec. I love it. 
> 
> Fuck: Yes, Canadian French uses fuck/fucking all the damn time, in addition to all that excellent Québécois religious swearing. You can read the standards board official ruling that it’s OK to say fuck on French-language radio and TV broadcasts [here in English](https://www.cbsc.ca/ckoi-fm-re-comments-made-on-les-poids-lourds-du-retour-and-radio-p-y/). 
> 
> 30 vies is a long-running Québécois soap opera. Nadège’s crush on Karine Vanasse is my crush on Karine Vanasse. I love her best in the English-language series _Cardinal_ , which unfortunately premiered too late for Nadège to binge it. You may have seen her in the American shows _Pan Am_ or _Revenge_. Seriously, watch _Cardinal_ , though.


	2. Semestre de printemps

Second semester was always easier with the language students, she found. The ones who really didn’t want to be there managed to disappear; there were none of the getting-to-know-you bumps in the road. There was some backsliding for most students, but it was easy to get back into the rhythm.

She wouldn’t have thought it, but Eric’s Canadian accent had gotten even stronger. He handed over his game schedule at the end of the first class. “ _Merci, Éric,_ ” she said, looking it over. “ _Comment était les vacances?_ ”

“ _Très bien, madame!_ ” he said, with his standard level of cheer. “ _J’ai allé—_ “

“ _Je suis allé._ ”

“ _Pardon, je suis allé à Montréal! C’est une ville très jolie._ ”

She didn’t bother to correct him about _une tres jolie ville_ , because the logic of adjective placement would take more energy than she had right now. “ _Qu’est-ce que tu as fait à Montréal?_ ”

“ _J’ai...visité?_ ” She nodded, and he continued. “ _J’ai visité un ami. Oh! Et j’ai mangé tarte au sucre, et chocolatines—_ “ of course Eric could recite every thing he’d eaten. She smiled and took a sip of coffee. “ _Et tourtiere, et putain—_ “

She spit out her coffee in shock, and stood there coughing for a moment. 

Eric was staring at her, eyes wide. “What on earth did I say?”

“Um,” she said, not quite sure how to explain. “Well. What were you trying to say you’d eaten?”

“The thing with fries and gravy and cheese?”

“ _Poutine_ ,” she said. 

“Yes, that,” he said. “They said it with a shorter ending, though.”

She thought about everything she’d watched lately. “ _Poutine_?”

“Yes, like that. Which is not how I just said it, I guess.”

“No, it’s.” She cleared her throat. “Well, the way you said it, it sounded like the word _putain_ , which is...quite rude.”

“Oh,” he gasped, and his hand came up to his mouth in shock. “Oh, ma’am, I would never—“

“No, of course not, Eric, do not worry,” she said, trying not to sink through the floor to avoid the rest of this conversation. “But you can see why I was surprised.”

He laughed a little, high and embarrassed. “Absolutely! Oh, my goodness. And to think, I was worried about how to pronounce _queue de castor_!”

“...Beaver...tail?”

“It’s like a funnel cake, only flat? I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. They put Nutella on them, though.” 

She had no idea what a funnel cake was, but nodded. “Sounds delicious.”

***

“Professor O’Connor?” Marc asked one day as they were finishing up going over some conjugations. “I have a weird question.”

“As long as it is about French, I will do my best,” Nadège said. 

“I don’t really get the difference between tu and vous,” he said. She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, fine, I get that they exist, and the plural and singular thing makes sense, I guess. But how do you know what to use with somebody?”

“Well, this is culture,” she said, and tried not to shrug as she said it. “The way we explain it, we try to say it is the difference between a formal relationship and an informal one.”

“But how can you tell? I mean, what’s formal and what’s informal?”

This was a particularly American question, she thought; their rampant lack of hierarchy, the refusal to consider that someone might be your better. She admired it, but it was hard to pull that wiring out of her bones. She tried to find a way to explain it. “In some cases, it is best to think about it as about respect. So, if it is someone who is more powerful than you, someone who has some kind of prestige, or someone who you very much respect, then you would certainly use vous. Another way to think about it as about intimacy. You only tutoyer—that’s the word for addressing someone as tu—with someone to whom you are very close. Family members, close friends. God, which raises interesting theological questions.” There’s a little laugh at that. “Sometimes people cross categories, and then you need to use your judgement. So, for instance, perhaps the first time you meet your father-in-law, you vouvoyer him. But then when you have known him ten years, you tutoyer. It is a developing process. Does that help?”

“I guess,” Marc said.

Nadège glanced around the room to see if anyone else had a question. Nobody appeared to, but Eric looked like he’d just seen a ghost. “Any other questions?” she asked. No takers.

After class, Eric hesitated a minute, and then came up to her. “Um, Professor? I just—I wanted to ask.” He cleared his throat. “You said the thing? About, um, using vous for your father-in-law? And I was just wondering—if you didn’t, if you used tu, how bad would that be?”

It was a strange question, and she’d never seen Eric like this, but then—oh. Well. That explained the practice all the time with Canadians, and the stickiness of his accent, and the trip to Montréal. “They’re Canadian?” she said, trying not to look too nosy.

He nodded, looking miserable.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “In Canada, people are much less strict about it. It seems like it is mostly just a number distinction at this point. Nearly everyone will tutoyer. And besides, they know you are learning, they know you speak English. Even if they do think you should have used vous, they won’t be offended.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

He let out a long sigh. “Oh my goodness. Thank you. I have been just about dying since you said that.” He laughed a little. “I mean, I’m from the south, and we take propriety and respect very seriously down there, you know? I mean, they told me to call them—to call them their first names, but I can’t even manage that. If I’d messed it all up in French by accident, I would just about die.”

“I am sure you made an excellent impression,” she said, and patted him on the arm. 

He beamed at her. Next office hours, he brought butter tarts (which are the _strangest_ thing she’s ever eaten).

***

The students are working on one of her favorite assignments—a presentation where they have to explain their weekly schedule. She loved it not only because it means that the spring semester is almost over and soon, she can pretend to be a scholar again for a couple of months. It was also good for the students, gave them a good chance to practice habitual vs occasional, to use a variety of tenses. And she actually liked hearing about their lives. But it also meant that she got a lot of vocabulary questions. She supposed that meant they weren’t relying on Google Translate, at least.

“Professor O’Connor?” Megan asked. “How would you say ‘my boyfriend’ in French?”

“Ah, well,” she said, leaning back. “That’s very culturally dependent. Most textbooks will give you _petit ami_ or _petite amie_ for boyfriend or girlfriend, but that is fairly outdated in my experience. In France, most often you would use _copain_ or _copine_. These words originally meant a very good friend or best friend, but now they are used almost exclusively in a romantic sense.” And then she thought of Eric, and said “But it varies between French speaking countries. For instance, in Canada, if you wanted to say ‘my girlfriend’ you would say _ma blonde_ , even if she isn’t blonde.”

There was a little wave of laughter, but Eric wasn’t laughing. He looked a little nervous, but then he said, “How would you say ‘my boyfriend’ in Canada?”

Huh. Well, she wasn’t particularly suprised—this was Samwell. “ _Mon chum_.”

“Chum?” he said, pronunciation entirely English. “Really?”

“I can’t explain it,” she said with a shrug.

“Hmph,” Eric said, and reached for his phone. She guessed someone was probably about to be interrogated by text message. Hopefully not the in-laws. 

***

The blissful early summer feeling of being done with everything, but not yet behind on self-imposed tasks, settled around Nadège. She slept in; she read books that weren’t in any way related to work; she baked bread. She was in the kitchen on a Tuesday morning, shaping the dough and half-listening to a Radio-Canada podcast; they were interviewing some hockey player, so she was caught off guard when she heard “ _quand j’étais à Samwell_.” She paused, brushed off her hands, and went to rewind to the beginning of the segment. Oh, Jack Zimmermann—she remembered the name from the campus newspaperShe hadn’t realized he was Canadian. Apparently he’d come out publicly in the wake of their championship win. Good for him, she supposed, and she kept kneading the dough. He sounded like a nice enough young man—he spoke well, at least, and she liked hearing him give Samwell credit for supporting his development as a player, as well as a person. That is what she liked about teaching there, after all. 

And then the interviewer asked how difficult it was, not being open about his sexuality. “ _C’était bien difficile, mais à moi, je l’ai accepté, parce que le sentier au LNH était précaire tout d’abord. Mais quand il commence à toucher à mon conjoint, Éric, j’ai pensé que—_ “

She stopped and stared at the phone. “ _Putain_ ,” she muttered to herself.

“Are you swearing at the bread?” Peter said.

“I think my favorite student was dating an NHL player all year,” she said. 

“What, the one with the weird Canadian accent?” Peter said. 

“Yes,” she said. “This is his boyfriend on the radio. The one who graduated last year and went to play hockey in Providence, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” Peter said. “Why’s he on the radio, though?”

“Shh, I’m listening,” she said. 

***

She thinks about it, and thinks about it, and it feels invasive, but it also feels like she should let him know. So later that night, she picks up her phone and writes the email.

_Dear Eric—_

_I’m sure you’re very busy right now, and not paying any attention to your French. But I heard Jack on Radio-Canada this morning. When you have a moment, you should ask him to explain to you the difference between chum and conjoint. You might find it interesting._

_Félicitations, et bonne été,_

_Prof. O’Connor_

She sent it off before she overthought it.

In the morning, she got back a reply:

_Dear Prof. O’Connor,_

_That was enlightening. I also learned he’s much better at doing press in French than in English, too._

_Hope you’re enjoying your summer as well! I’ll bring you back something interesting from Montréal._

_Merci,  
Eric_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Food: 
> 
> Tarte au sucre (sugar pie) is usually made with maple syrup, while butter tarts are made with brown sugar and corn syrup. Chocolatines are called pain au chocolat in Paris, or ‘chocolate croissants’ in the anglosphere. Tourtiere is meat pie. Poutine is just the literal best. Beavertails/queues de castor are big flat pieces of fried dough, covered with as many sugary toppings as you can stand. The only one of my favorite French Canadian food names I wasn’t able to work in is pâté chinois, Chinese pâté, which is what shepherd’s pie gets called (????). 
> 
>  
> 
> Bitty and Nadège’s conversation about his trip to Montreal:
> 
> Merci, Éric. Comment était les vacances?: Thank you, Eric. How was vacation?
> 
> Très bien, madame! J’ai allé—: Very good, ma’am! I went [incorrect]—
> 
> Je suis allé: I went [correct]
> 
> Pardon, je suis allé à Montréal! C’est une ville très jolie: Sorry, I went to Montréal! It is a city very pretty [incorrect adjective placement—usually adjectives come after nouns in French, but not for certain ones—I was taught BAGS, adjectives of beauty, age, goodness, or size]
> 
> Qu’est-ce que tu as fait à Montréal?: What did you do in Montréal?
> 
> J’ai...visité? J’ai visité un ami. Oh! Et j’ai mangé tarte au sucre, et chocolatines—Et tourtiere, et putain—: I...visited? I visited a friend. Oh! And I ate tarte au sucre, and chocolatines, and tourtiere, and whore—“
> 
> Jack in his interview:
> 
> Quand j’ai été à Samwell: when I was at Samwell
> 
> C’était bien difficile, mais à moi, je l’ai accepté, parce que le sentier au LNH était précaire tout d’abord. Mais quand il commence à toucher à mon conjoint, Éric, j’ai pensé que—: It was really difficult, but for me, I accepted it, because the path to the NHL was rocky from the start. But when it started to affect my partner, Eric, I thought that—
> 
> Words/Elaborations:
> 
> Putain: While literally translated as ‘whore,’ and it can certainly be used like that, putain also covers some of the semantic territory of the English ‘fuck’ in French French, mostly in the form “putain de.” So in [my greatest literary work ever](https://archiveofourown.org/works/140640), Foucault says “putain de zombies,” which would be best translated as “fucking zombies.”
> 
> Tu/vous: I’m writing the Canadian distinction from my experience, rather than the literature. For instance, during my job interview, I vaguely processed that I was being tutoyer’d by everyone, but assumed that was because I was literally junior to all of them. Eventually I had it explained to me that ‘we all tutoyer among the profs in the department, because we’re all equal to each other’—whereas my instinct as a speaker of European French had been that we would all vouvoyer, because we all owed each other equal respect. And in everyday settings you usually use tu; the guy I bought something from at the campus bookstore today asked me “Tu connais ton numéro d’emploi?” to give me the employee discount. It does feel like, in most cases, it would be more distancing rather than respectful to vouvoyer someone outside of a very formal professional conversation.
> 
> The ma blonde/mon chum thing is real, and I Do Not Get It.
> 
> Conjoint/conjointe literally means “partner,” in the relationship sense. In my experience, most Canadians use conjoint/partner for both married and unmarried-but-serious relationships. (I mostly like this, except that I’m super gay so I like saying my wife, which is less easily mistaken than my partner. However, in French it’s the opposite; because of French pronunciation rules I’d have to say mon épouse, which is masculine appearing, so ma conjointe is less ambivalent.) By calling Bitty his conjoint on national radio, Jack has just basically upgraded them to married status. NBD.


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